


Burning

by catsmiaow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 09:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsmiaow/pseuds/catsmiaow
Summary: Nothing is ever what it seems.





	Burning

_Hamm: Why do you stay with me?_  
_Clov: Why do you keep me?_  
_Hamm: There's no one else._  
_Clov: There's nowhere else._  
\---Samuel Beckett , **Endgame**

Bodies that were dead stayed dead, Lestrade reasoned, at least until the Zombie Apocalypse came. There were nights like this that made him look forward to something like that. The only problem he could foresee was that they were most all shit shots with guns, and while he might be able to hurt someone badly with a baton, zombies tended to be resistant to that sort of thing. He could see himself writing up a requisition for firearms and penning in 'Zombie Apocalypse Training' under the reason blank.

Forty-eight hours without sleep and only about four before that was beginning to catch up with him, a piece of information his tired mind latched onto like a life preserver. Any insanity was temporary and would clear up.

“Might go off better to say that the Americans have them so why can't we?” he said to himself as he unlocked the door to his flat.

A more sinister idea was that whatever madness Sherlock Holmes had was catching. Wasn't that just the best idea in the world to end his day on?

“He would say I'm too stupid for that.”

Sherlock seemed to be proved right as Lestrade tried to shove open his door and step in only to have his face and shoulder collide with the wood in a dull thud that left little doubt that his door was smarter than he was. Or that the bastard that had picked the lock and left it unlocked was probably sitting at his kitchen table and smirking to himself.

The irrational desire to kick or curse at his innocent door passed and Lestrade patiently unlocked it now (after having locked it before). Shutting it quietly behind him, he tossed his keys into the little ugly dish that would never hold candy but instead had a few nicotine patches in it. Slumping into a chair at the table, he heartily hoped that the Sherlock Holmes across the table from him was a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and not the real thing.

“It was the mother,” Sherlock said, his face rendered ghostly by the flat shine of his laptop's screen as he worked. “She kept saying the daughter was around because the body was there. You should check the walls.”

Lestrade stared across the table tiredly at Sherlock, feeling the crush the past days weighing on him.

Silence spun out between them, Lestrade studying the grain of his table and Sherlock tapping away furiously at the laptop.

“Why Mycroft?”

Lestrade blinked as he raised his head, trying to wrap his mind around the question.

Sherlock's face was a study of angles as he watched Lestrade over the top of his screen. Lestrade could feel those eyes picking him apart, pulling all his thoughts and what made him 'him' out into the open.

“What?”

“Why Mycroft? Why him?”

“I can't do this.”

Lestrade pushed himself away from the table and headed for the door, fishing his keys out of the bowl. He could stay, could explain and could probably end up fucking or letting Sherlock fuck him until they were both senseless. It would be easy to do that.

“Is this because of John?” Sherlock called out from behind him, needing to understand or so Lestrade believed. He didn't look back to see if the lights were still off or on now as he hailed a cab.

_I've an idea. Why don't we have a little game?_  
_Let's pretend that we're human beings and that we're actually alive._  
_Just for a while. What do you say?_  
\---John Osborne, **Look Back in Anger**

The second door Lestrade unlocked that night led to blessed silence. What little light there was had been muted until it was almost of the darkness but not quite. Clothing was dropped carelessly and a pair of flannel pyjama bottoms were dragged out of a drawer he knew by touch. When he slid into bed, it was against a warm body that didn't demand, didn't get 'bored' or change mercurially.

There was something to be said for a sparrow over a blazing songbird.

The hand that curled around his back and held him despite the scent of dust and dead things that Lestrade knew had to be still clinging to his skin was gentle as if its owner understood that sometimes it was all too much, too fast and loud, too … everything to be stood. He didn't have to ask if tomorrow would be a true day off with no calls. He didn't have to bear all the press conferences, the murder cases, the complaints and the...

The everything.

A soft press of lips pressed to his forehead as if that could silence the thoughts within.

For a time, it did.

_And only if we could predict no changes in the weather_  
_And only if we didn't live in life as well as dreams_  
_And only if we could stop_  
_And be forever..._  
\--- Narrator, **Blood Brothers**

“He doesn't know, does he?”

The words were running short with the blood starting to choke the questioner. He mused on this as he ran the flat of the blade over his victim's throat, a line of silver tracing along the throbbing pulse. “Doesn't know what?”

“That you're really Moriarty. That 'Jim from IT' was just another smoke and mirror trick.”

He smiled, a hint of embarrassment there although the knife in his hand didn't waver or move away. “Oh, that? He knows.”

“And he... let you... this?”

Lestrade tightened his grip, enough that a thin thread of scarlet followed behind the quicksilver tip of the blade. “Let me? That's a good question. I think it's more than he knows I have to.”

“Have to?”

“If it's any consolation, you won't remember this. Not while you're awake anyways. I think you sometimes have nightmares about it. I've heard you scream in your sleep about it.”

The victim only stared up at him, that mask hiding all the horror that was inside.

“He loves me,” Lestrade told Sherlock Holmes patiently as he kept the 'consulting detective' pinned under his weight and the sharpness of his knife. “I have to. It makes things quiet. I know you can't understand that, and you never will. You'll forget all of this. You always do. I've defeated you four times now, and those ever so helpful doctors he keeps on hand make sure you get the right injection or something else that makes you forget. You're a former or current addict after all. Who knows what those cheap chemicals have done to your brilliant mind by now? A few missing hours? No one cares about that.”

“I'll remember.”

“You haven't before.”

The lights went out for Sherlock as Lestrade's fist descended, hitting that exact sweet spot to put him out.

When he woke up hours later with Watson at his bedside, his memory was fuzzy and unreliable. He knew there was something he had to remember, but it hung out of his grasp like smoke in the wind.

When Mycroft Holmes awoke that morning after a long night at the hospital, he kept his arms around Gregory Lestrade... James Moriarty... and kissed his temple gently. It would be weeks or maybe months before the next flare-up. In time, he hoped they would stop altogether.

He hoped.

Until then, he moved the pieces on the chessboard to keep his lover and his brother alive. It was for love after all.

For love.

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from a dead acct.


End file.
